Day 38: Stelleluna--Asenemaso

Friday the 13th. On a day that is supposed to be haunted and filled with bad luck, today was anything but that. Teaching did not happen today for two reasons: 1. there was an intense storm this morning that prevented many kids from getting to school and 2. the school had our students carrying cement blocks on their heads. What for, I'm not sure. We do know that the schools use the kids for upkeeping the landscape and the school grounds. It seems like a very odd concept to us, but it makes sense here. There's no way the school can afford a landscaper and it also cuts down the expenses a student owes. The frustrating part is that they decide to sacrifice an entire academic day for it. Oh well, TIA.

I was discouraged today. Abigail, one of my students, came to the library today. I had just finished reading a book about Native Americans with Dorothy when Abigail slid into the seat next to me with a book in hand. I didn't recognize her at first (she never participates in class), but I did recognize the book she chose to read: Stelleluna. Memories of childhood flooded my mind: long wet hair after a warm and steamy shower, thin glasses pushed up the highest part of my nose, settling next to my mom or day in the armchair (it is now Strider's self-proclaimed throne) with my brother and sister squashed next to me, ready to hear the words that would guide our dreams that night. It didn't matter what the book was, just that we had a book ready to us before we shut our eyes on the day. Alas, the days when a absence of a story before bed was a torment too unjust to fathom. Be my witness, do not take away my stories! Those stories kept me in childhood and kept me in my world in which reality could not invade. When my eyes fell on Stelleluna, all these thoughts came to me and I thought that even more of my inner child would emerge as the words would be read into the African afternoon. But this nostalgia was interrupted when Abigail could not read a single world on the page. My heart sank not because I could not enjoy the story but because I knew Abigail's life did not have books. It was painful enough to swallow the fact that a fifth grader did not know how to sound out any words presented to her, but the wound went deeper when I realized Abigail's life was probably missing an element of imagination and wonder. Books were, and still are, an outlet to the reality that suffocates us. To be deprived of such a thing is a crime.